


for will in us is overruled by fate

by jaythenerdkid



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1537112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaythenerdkid/pseuds/jaythenerdkid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She's the unstoppable cannon; he's the immovable post.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>They collide.</em>
</p><p>Thoughts on the progression of a relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for will in us is overruled by fate

**Author's Note:**

> I told my partner that I was going to make him marathon TMP with me during the hiatus whether he liked it or not. He just laughed and agreed. ("Even if I don't end up liking it, Mindy is still very cute." --my boyfriend displaying his excellent grasp of priorities.) This is for him.

She's the unstoppable cannon; he's the immovable post.

They collide.

* * *

It's little things - the sound of that damn Aaliyah song blaring through the office, the way she waltzes in so cheerfully every damn morning before he's even had his coffee. Everyone just  _bends_ around her like she's some kind of force of nature - Jeremy, Dr Shulman, Shauna, the nurses. Danny is set in his ways and he does not feel like bending, but Mindy doesn't seem to care about how he feels. She drags him along to office lunches at cafes she tells him are highly endorsed by whichever celebrity she's obsessed with this week, interrupts him when he's doing his paperwork to gossip about Kardashians and something called "blue ivy" like he's supposed to care. He doesn't care; he refuses to.

It doesn't stop her. He starts to wonder if anything will.

* * *

Before she came, he had the run of the doctor's lounge. Now it's full of reality TV and Mindy's chatter as she reads him the headlines from those glossy magazines she loves. Can't a man read the newspaper and enjoy a sandwich in peace? If she notices that he wants to be left alone, she doesn't give any indication of it, and soon, his lunchtimes are given over to The True Housewives of Jersey Shore, or whatever it's called, his newspaper neglected by his side. (He complains that she's filling up his head with vacuous crap. She downloads the New York Times app onto his phone and tells him to stop being such an old man. He should be angrier about that, but he isn't.)

She organises office parties for  _everything_ (seriously, Guy Fawkes Night? They're not even British, who cares?) and steals all his drug rep-supplied pens because she keeps losing hers. She spends so much time on all that pop culture garbage that Danny has no idea how she finds the time to be a good doctor, but the infuriating thing is that somehow she  _does._ He's seen her with patients, and while he'll never tell her this, the way she puts them at ease and the effortless competence with which she handles even the most complex of cases is almost enviable. He doesn't understand it. She is a contradiction in high heels and canary yellow winter coats.

He hates things he doesn't understand. He hates her. (He doesn't really hate her. Could anyone? Damn it. He hates himself for thinking that.)

* * *

Eventually, even Danny starts to bend.

* * *

They settle into an easy - if antagonistic - familiarity, their fractious relationship punctuated by moments in which he almost thinks he likes her. They bicker over where they'll go for lunch and which street vendors sell the best coffee. Sometimes, Danny has to stop himself from smiling at the way Mindy discusses Beyonce and Meg Ryan like they are topics of life-shattering importance. (Sometimes, he doesn't bother to stop himself.)

Her energy is somehow both exhausting and invigorating. He finds himself pulled into the mundane drama of her everyday life - the boys she dates, the pair of Jimmy Choos she saw at a sample sale and almost bought before some total  _bitch_ stole them from right in front of her, her conspiracy theories about everyone from Sarah Palin ("has anyone actually  _seen_ her and Tina Fey in the same room at the same time, Danny? I'm just saying!") to her landlord ("I need you to come over to my house and check that he didn't plant any spy cameras in my shower when he came to change the washers - what, don't you care about my American right to _privacy_ , Danny?"). He should mind. He knows he should mind. He used to mind, he swears. But as he's dutifully checking her bathroom for spy cameras ("well, I had to be _sure_ , didn't I, Danny?" - "I still can't believe you don't know how to change a washer, Mindy, how do you even live on your own?" - "And ruin my manicure? Do you even know how much these nails cost?"), he realises he doesn't any more.

That should worry him more than it does. Shouldn't it?

* * *

He ends up seeing  _The Notebook, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle_. He finally learns that Blue Ivy is a person ( _really?_ ) _._ One day, after everyone's left the office and he's catching up on paperwork, he finds himself humming that Aaliyah song and shakes his head with a smile.

(It does give him an idea for her Secret Santa gift. He tries to remember the last time he tried this hard at anything for a woman and realises he can't. That should worry him too. She smiles at him like he's the greatest guy in the universe and he stops caring about "should".)

He's not just bending; he's falling - further and further into this bizarre life she's created for the two of them, further and further into something he doesn't want to name because then he'd  _really_ have to worry.

* * *

(He stops trying not to name it when he kisses her in the back of an aeroplane, though he's not willing to admit it out loud yet.)

* * *

Life isn't like a romantic comedy, a smooth progression to a happy ending. They date. They break up. They see other people. They're miserable. He finds himself writing letter after letter that he doesn't send, tearing them up so that Morgan won't find them in his desk drawer, saying all the things he doesn't know how to say to her face. He misses Beyonce and reality TV and glossy magazines and getting coffee from the second-best street vendor near the office just to make her happy. He thinks he should fix this. He wonders if he can. He wonders if she'd even want him to now. Another letter goes through the paper shredder, the words a little blotched and smudged.

He's not crying. It's the dust in here irritating his eyes. Why do they even bother with a cleaner, is he right?

* * *

In the end, though, he knows he has to at least try. He watches  _Love Actually, When Harry Met Sally_ (again), composes speeches in his head the way he once choreographed a dance for her, back when the only way he knew how to say "I love you" was not to say it and hope she'd figure it out.

She walks into his office one day and he forgets the speeches, but he finally figures out how to say the words.

* * *

Life isn't like a romantic comedy, but that doesn't mean there's no such thing as a happy ending. You just have to be prepared to bend a little.

* * *

She's the unstoppable cannon. He's the immovable post.

He moves.

* * *

_"The reason no man knows; let it suffice_

_What we behold is censured by our eyes._

_Where both deliberate, the love is slight:_

_Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?"_ \--"Hero and Leander", Kit Marlowe

 


End file.
